The research outlined in this proposal centers on the investigation of the biologically relevant system properties of lipid bilayers formed from well characterized phospholipids and cholesterol which contain variable amounts of glycosphingolipids of the types found in mammalian cell plasma membranes. Emphasis is placed on the examination of bilayers in the form of single lamellar vesicles which have glycosphingolipid incorporated only on the outer surface; a system which is the analog of the plasma membrane bilayer. Multilamellar liposomes as well as large and small unilamellar vesicles will be utilized in this work which will depend upon a variety of physical techniques including fluorescent volume measurement, autocorrelation light scattering and hydrodynamic methods to characterize vesicle dispersions.